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Wednesday is winding down in our little corner of the planet and we decided to make a Wu-mart run before dinner to stock up on some essentials (snacks and beer) for the rest of the week and our upcoming trip to Qingdao over the May Day holiday.  On Thursdays we go to our branch schools and while Julie does have, her words, little angels for students there she has never been all that impressed with the lunch offering.  While I've never used the term angels to describe my Thursday students I do have one incredible cook.  Tradeoffs, get used to 'em.  Julie is taking matters into her own hands and stocking up on bowls of ramen noodles to take with her.  Lucky girl, it's not like I can bring substitute children to teach (or the kids could sub in another teacher for that matter).

Back to our trip.  We left the school building and as it was about quarter till five there was still a big crowd milling around the street in front of our school but we did notice a larger than usual crowd congregating around what appeared to be a new sign about 50m from the entrance to our school (and home).  What was on this sign?  A bus number!

Beijing city bus signs are in green and white with a dash of red thrown in.  The first and last stops of the line are written in Pin Yin (Chinese words spelled out with the Roman alphabet) and the beginning and ending hours are listed just below.  Running horizontally the entire route is written, but only in Chinese with the characters falling vertically in white on a green field.  Why all this fuss about a bus stop?  Well, we spend a lot of time on buses and we spend a lot of time walking to buses.  The next closest bus stop is just under a KM from our school gates and while we appreciate the exercise after eight months the route has become less than thrilling. 

As you may have deciphered, Julie and I have no clue where this bus actually goes and therefore, whether it will have any grand benefit to us.  We do have hope that it will and Andy Dufresne taught me over and over "hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things."

Seems like a good place to call it a day.
-Ryan